


your name is the splinter inside me

by abvj



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M, Post #78
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:16:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abvj/pseuds/abvj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there is a jolt of something that settles near the base of her spine when his fingers rest on the small of her back to guide her under the umbrella, well – Lizzie chooses to ignore it completely. </p>
<p>Somewhere, she knows Gigi is grinning proudly at this turn of events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your name is the splinter inside me

When Lizzie goes to pack up her stuff afterwards, the bowtie and newsboy hat stick out from where they had been buried near the bottom of her bag, taunting her.

She hates the way her hands shake when she shoves the camera inside. 

 

 

 

It’s raining. 

Which is, well, just perfect really. Quite fitting considering the karma she’s steadily been collecting since last summer and the way the universe seems to be conspiring against her today. She can hear it as soon as she steps off the elevator, and inwardly groans, slowing her pace as the people around her brace themselves with umbrellas and hooded raincoats. 

Lizzie pauses right at the edge of the lobby, where the wall of glass doors separate Pemberley from the streets of San Francisco. She has her tote bag filled with her camera equipment slung over her shoulder and her brand new suede boots on her feet. Neither are going to fair well in this weather.

As she stands there watching the rain hit the glass without remorse, debating whether or not she wants to spend money on a cab or wait for the weather to break, somebody settles into the space beside her. 

Lizzie doesn’t need to look to know it’s Darcy. She just knows. 

A few months ago, she probably would have made a joke about it one of her videos, something along the lines of being able to feel him judging her from afar. Maybe it would have been partly true, but now she just feels the shift in the air when he’s around, notices the way he fills the space around her, and tries to ignore the way something warm and not entirely welcome coils and settles deep in the pit of her stomach. Taking a deep breath, she squares her shoulders, and feels much like she does whenever he’s involved – like she is preparing for some epic battle of wills. But neither of them move to break the silence, and Lizzie just rocks back on her heels once, then twice, waiting for him to say something. 

“My offer still stands,” he tells her quietly after a moment. 

When she turns to look at him then, she catches him considering her carefully, his mouth pressed into a firm line. It twitches sheepishly when she catches his eye, the keys in his hand jingling a little as he awkwardly dangles them from his fingers, but he doesn’t look away. Lizzie thinks she likes that more than she probably should. 

“I don’t want to inconvenience you,” she says, which, even though she hasn’t entirely earned his kindness after humiliating him for all of the internet to see, is complete and utter bullshit. Lizzie would very much like to inconvenience him. There is literally no one she can call and she’s already late for dinner. 

Darcy shakes his head and almost, _almost_ laughs. “It really is no trouble at all, Lizzie.” 

He doesn’t exactly give her time to argue before he is swinging open the door for her and sliding his umbrella open against the rain at the same time. 

 

 

 

(If there is a jolt of something that settles near the base of her spine when his fingers rest on the small of her back to guide her under the umbrella, well – Lizzie chooses to ignore it completely. 

Somewhere, she knows Gigi is grinning proudly at this turn of events.)

 

 

 

Darcy’s car is so perfectly Darcy in a way Lizzie can’t really explain. She doesn’t know cars, doesn’t really _care_ to know about cars, but she understands enough to realize that his is nice, and the leather smells expensive, so she kind of feels bad about her clothes getting it wet. 

A car ride that should take all of five minutes is probably going to take twenty due to traffic and the rain. They spend the first five minutes of it in awkward silence – save for three times Darcy asked her if she was cold, and Lizzie lied horribly and said _no_ because she didn’t want to feel like a burden. He saw through it somehow – which Lizzie chooses to believe has to do with her awful lying skills instead of something else entirely –and every time he kept turning the heat up more and more until she started to feel warmth in her toes again. 

After that all Lizzie can hear is the silence pressing them further apart and the rain pounding against the roof of the car as they wait at red light after red light. She’s about to ask for some music – has been having a very active internal debate with herself over what exactly _William_ Darcy would listen to in the car to keep herself in check and her mouth closed – when he reaches forward and flicks on the radio, brining it down to a dull noise that does much to ease her nerves. 

It’s NPR, which is also so perfectly Darcy in a way Lizzie can’t really explain, but finds almost endearing. 

“I don’t want you to be angry with Gigi,” he says, almost out of nowhere, and the sound of his voice has her jerking her head to look at him. “She’s —”

“—Crazy?” Lizzie supplies for him without really thinking about it, and cringes at how mean she sounds because that is not how she meant it _at all._

She watches Darcy for his reaction. Has the _Iamsorryididnotmeanitthatway_ on the tip of her tongue, but his mouth twists into a smile and there is an accompanying shoulder shrug that Lizzie swears is a laugh, and she is so dumbfounded about how nicely his face looks in that moment that she says nothing instead. 

“Well, yes, but she also…” he starts, stops, turns to look at her now. He’s not smiling anymore, not like he was, but his mouth twitches on the left side and Lizzie knows he’s trying not to. She sort of wishes he would. She _really_ wishes he would. “We take care of each other. After our parents died we…” he trails off and Lizzie knows better than to push, knows she has no right to push, so she stays quiet. “She just wants what is best for me and I for her. She just has odd ways of showing it.” 

There is no appropriate response to that, so Lizzie just nods and allows the silence to fill the distance between them again. 

 

 

 

(The thing is that, well – Lizzie gets it. She understands. There is nothing Lizzie wouldn’t do for her family. _Nothing_. Even when Lydia is at her worst and getting in her own way, Lizzie usually understands that is when she is needed the most and teps in to do whatever needs to be done. Lizzie may bitch and complain and be completely condescending about it at times, but she still shows up, still cares because that is what family does. They take care of each other. And when she looks at the whole fiasco with Bing and Jane and Darcy objectively, Lizzie can admit she sort of sees his side of things. She can admit that in his totally convoluted way he was trying to take care of his family – even if he was doing it with misinterpreted facts and at the expense of her sister’s happiness. 

This doesn’t excuse what he did, and she is nowhere close to forgiving him for it, but it does do much to help her understand the why of it all. 

It also does much to help her come to terms with a truth she’s been trying to outrun for some time now – that maybe Darcy isn’t exactly the villain she’s made him out to be. 

This, unfortunately for Lizzie, is knowledge she has absolutely no idea what to do with. 

She has dedicated so much time and energy into hating him these past six months, into trying to make people understand why she hates him and why they should hate him too, that she kind of feels lost with out it. 

Now that the tightness in her chest she always associated with anger and hatred whenever she thought of him has started to loosen and become something else entirely, she sort of doesn’t know what to do without it.)

 

 

 

They talk about work because it’s easy, somewhat of a common ground, and Lizzie kind of likes the way Darcy opens up when she asks him about Pemberley. 

It’s still awkward, but she’s smiling, and so is he – well, Darcy is smiling as much as she’s ever seen Darcy smile. When he pulls up to the restaurant, he makes her wait until he can drop her off right in front, even tries to give her his umbrella for later – which Lizzie refuses for various reasons, the first of which being she can’t take care of herself, _thank you very much._

Still, Darcy tries, and keeps trying, because he honestly looks worried and not like he knows better than her, not like she needs to be told what to do. It says something, Lizzie thinks, that she doesn’t find it as annoying as she supposes she would have six months ago.

When the car finally comes to a stop in front of the mostly covered walkway of the restaurant, he says something like _Pemberley is lucky to have you, Lizzie_ and it throws her, the sincerity behind it, the way he’s look at her when he says it. Lizzie stutters and stops, says something stupid like _thank you_ or _I’m glad to be here._ Lizzie doesn’t really know, just allows the words to fall out of her mouth, because the way he looks at her sometimes, the way she is slowly realizing he has always looked at her but she just didn’t see it, unhinges her. 

It’s not a feeling she particularly likes. 

Lizzie’s hands are shaking again when she moves to unbuckle her seatbelt and reaches for the door handle. She turns away from him, moves to get out of the car, but she pauses, doesn’t know what to say, but knows she needs to say something. It’s a problem with her. Lizzie often fills silences with words because she doesn’t like the way the stillness rings in her ears. She often goes too far when she should just stop while she’s well enough ahead. 

She means to say _thank you,_ has the words right there, but what comes out is _I’m sorry._

This surprises her as it much as it does him – she sees the surprise give way to confusion on his face. Finds a bit of satisfaction in the fact that she is finally able to read him more easily now, after all this time. Lizzie shakes her head when he starts to talk, holds up her hand in a motion to get him to stop before he even begins. 

“Just let me, okay? Let me say this. I’m not sorry for what I said because I felt it very strongly at the time. But I am sorry for the way I said it. And I am definitely sorry for the way you found out about the videos.” Lizzie winces and makes herself meet his eyes when she says, “That was not my classiest moment.”

Darcy presses his mouth into a frown, shakes his head softly. “I don’t care about any of that, Lizzie.” 

“So you’ve said,” she says, and maybe even believes him. She wants to tell him that the apology doesn’t mean she’s forgiven him for Bing and Jane, but she thinks he already knows it. Watches as he reaches up and rubs at the back of his neck awkwardly in a move that is so unlike Darcy that it does much to humanize him to her. Lizzie murmurs her _thank you,_ finally, and then, “I’ll see you around?”

His mouth turns and he is looking at her _that_ way again. Lizzie has to force herself not to look away. 

“I certainly hope so,” he says. 

 

 

 

During dinner, she can’t stop smiling. 

Lizzie isn’t ready to think about why.


End file.
